command not found error in shell script

Question

I wrote a code to count the number of word per line. Here is my code

num= $(echo $compareFile1 | wc -w)

Here $compareFile1 contains each line. I am trying to get the number in num variable. But I am getting the following error

line 3: 6: command not found

where 6 clearly the number of word. I checked. but there is nothing in the num variable and also the error. Anybody can help me?

Answer 1

there should not be space after the = operator, that is: num=$(echo $compareFile1 | wc -w)